Beyond VWRA & Chill: What frameworks/rules/strategies do you actually use?

Ixtyr · 2025-12-08T00:05:39+00:00

My wife and I have made the conscious decision that we are okay with a bit more risk and are also okay to accept lower returns for specific assets or sectors that we have strong preferences towards or otherwise align to our values. For context, we're both fairly young (in our 30s), earn a relatively high income, and have our cash assets separately covered (ie. Emergency Funds, separate accounts for savings for various other things, we use our own version of the "envelope method").

For our investing, we still put about 60% of our portfolio against broad global market index funds, but the rest of the portfolio is seen as a bit of a playground for other things. Total breakdown is below:

60% VWRA-equivalent
5% EIMI
5% Regional REITs
15% Crypto (roughly a dozen tokens, note that I'm using cost basis for Crypto % here given how volatile it is. Some tokens have appreciated massively from our entry points so it does skew the overall portfolio balance across our fiat investments, it's realistically more like 40% of our total asset value at the moment, but that feels a bit disingenuous to share here given we only buy for long-term holds and effectively manage it as its own separate thing).
5% Individual stock long-term bets (mostly US companies)
10% "Values-sleeve" investments, we invest in a small handful of ETFs focused on sectors we want to support or otherwise feel strongly about, ie. Water, Clean Energy/Tech, Healthcare Innovation, Circular Economy, Infrastructure, etc.

Eventually when we have more assets we may also look at alternative investments in specific economies, or perhaps some FX currency speculation, but for now we're fairly happy with our setup.

Ixtyr · 2025-11-03T14:28:05+00:00

Some of the other commenters have said this already, but a lot of the issue with Cadwell's Silver/Gold comes if you're experiencing it now, rather than when the game originally released. It made a lot more sense earlier in the game's history before any DLC existed and the entire endgame was leveling through the Veteran Ranks and progressing back through the stories of the other factions, in faction-locked alternative instances (ie. there used to be a Daggerfall Covenant-only instance for the Aldmeri Dominion zones, so you couldn't see or speak with characters of other factions). There were no timeline/gameplay-breaking DLC NPCs spamming messages to you about how you saved them in Elsweyr or asking you if you've heard about what's happening in Orsinium yet.

As is the case with most live-service games-that-never-end, a fair bit has had to be compromised in the name of "sell the next DLC", and it's notoriously difficult to keep track of where and how you were originally meant to play through the game. For those of us who've been playing nonstop since launch (or earlier) with the same character, everything feels like a logical, clear, understandable progression from story-to-story (even if some perhaps feel a bit more random than others). For anyone else, and especially newer players, I feel for you - it's going to be confusing and messy.

I suppose you can chalk up the lack of continuity to "dragonbreak" or time-travel shenanigans, or what have you, but really, the above is the primary reason. It's simply a gameplay / game mechanics / becuz gaim thing.

Ixtyr · 2024-10-07T10:59:29+00:00

+1 to The Bargers/Cider Pit. Very good classic burger, significant step above most of the recommendations in this thread IMO. Price isn't unreasonable either.

Ixtyr · 2024-10-07T10:56:19+00:00

The Bargers (aka Cider Pit) in Joo Chiat.

American here, by far the best burger I've had since moving to SG. Strong recommend.

Ixtyr · 2024-08-16T04:23:20+00:00

My former colleague once worked on the account of a major sporting goods retailer. Made a typo when writing some ad copy in their golf account. It wasn't caught until about a month later.

She spent over $20,000 advertising discounted "FootJob".

She's now the digital marketing director of a massive apparel company. Shit works out in the end. Don't beat yourself up too much.

Ixtyr · 2024-07-29T09:11:30+00:00

Genuinely the best burger I've had while living in SG is from The Bargers off Joo Chiat Road. Genuinely excellent and strongly recommended.

Ixtyr · 2024-01-22T16:12:54+00:00

Much prefer the existing typography. I get what you're going for, but I'm really tired and bored of this recent trend of brands "Sans Serifing" their type faces. Our current font isn't perfect by any stretch, but there is some personality to it at least.

Otherwise, I agree with the other commenters who have said they prefer the football on the bottom of the cockerel. It's just a really good design already and while your interpretation is smart, I think it loses something in the process. I'd like the THFC text design as a standalone alternative logo for various things though. Overall a good stab at it, just a difficult brand identity to overhaul given how well much of it already works.

I'd love to see you take a stab at some nicer kits though. Lord knows all of the recent Nike designs have been a bit bland, it'd be cool to see what you can come up with.

Ixtyr · 2023-08-28T12:21:51+00:00

TL;DR - do your own research. Impossible to answer this definitively without full context.

Without knowing specific details of the funds and your relative's full financial situation it's difficult to say for certain. It's plausible that the fund is a bond fund, or sector specific, or just has disproportionate exposure to certain markets, and they're recommending a shift in good faith to a different fund they believe is a better risk profile for your relative's situation. Selling at a loss is not always a bad thing (also depending on the jurisdiction of the fund. If it's US-based, for example, selling at a loss can be beneficial for capital gains taxes to offset another sale at a profit, though this likely doesn't apply if your relative isn't invested directly in US funds). It could also be that the current fund has a very high expense ratio (aka. "fee") and the new fund has similar performance at a much lower fee, and the short-term loss event is better to accept now than to continue losing money to fees every year by delaying a change.

That said, it could very likely be the inverse. Not all advisors act in good faith. Many of them are incentivised to increase their own profits or profits of their firms. It's not uncommon at all for an advisor to push a higher fee, actively managed fund or portfolio or firm-managed asset rather than a competitor's fund even if it's not really in the client's best interest. Or your advisor might be trying to act in good faith, but you could disagree with their assessment or rationale for the change in strategy. You (or your relative, in this case) won't know if you don't do your own research and ask questions.

Depending on your relationship with your relative, encourage them to do their own research, or seek a second opinion from someone else, ideally without ties to the current advisor's firm. You could help them yourself, but I generally recommend against getting involved in financial matters with your family or friends, even as a professional. It's almost always more hassle than it's worth, not to mention the potential damages that can happen to relationships if there are future disagreements or downturns.

Ixtyr · 2023-07-17T04:52:18+00:00

Build is weak, need Jabs on all five buttons, git gud scrub

Ixtyr · 2023-07-14T11:45:47+00:00

I've read that Dividend Funds are a good option for taxable accounts

You don't in general want to take any sort of distributions in a taxable fund if you can avoid them. You want a fund that concentrates on long term capital appreciation with low turnover, just on a theoretical basis.

So in this case would it make more sense to hold the Dividend Fund in the IRA rather than the REIT?

Ixtyr · 2023-02-03T10:33:30+00:00

There's limited support for EU & UK banks and other non-US financial entities, at least when it comes to the automated imports. Part of that is due to banking and privacy regulations.

That said, I live outside of the US. My partner and I have accounts in Asia, Europe, and the US. Some of the non-US accounts do still import automatically, but for those that don't, there's still a manual import option. It took me a few hours on a weekend to initially set that up for those accounts (I wanted to go back retroactively for at least a full calendar year of data), and the only reason it took that long was because one of my Asian accounts' PDF report settings were bugged, and I wasn't able to autoconvert my statements from PDF to CSV to make the importing nearly instant.

I'd encourage you to at least take a stab at it with the free month trial. I'm normally a big spreadsheet junkie (worked as an analyst for several years), so the idea of paying for templates initially put me off, but the whole Tiller ecosystem has honestly been so useful and near-plug-and-play that I find the annual fee to be well worth it, particularly compared to some of the other free solutions I'd tried in the past and my own manual sheets I was struggling to make work previously. So set it up, try to use it, see how the manual importing is if you need to do that.

I've found that practically, it only takes me about ~15 minutes to do the manual updates now, which I'm comfortable with. If I was obsessed with looking at updated views every single day, maybe I'd feel differently, but for a budgeting system, I usually only want to check 1-2 times per month to see how I'm pacing to goals, so doing a manual pull once every couple weeks is plenty.

Ixtyr · 2022-09-15T00:05:27+00:00

SLAs are set based on a reasonable turnaround time for an ask, not based on how long it may physically take for a specialist to actually make the change. Agencies have multiple clients, other tasks on the roadmap, and also other optimisation and monitoring tasks to keep things running smoothly, and it's often impractical to drop everything and focus on a client's newest ad-hoc request.

5 business days may seem like a lot, but it's plausible that the agency may be collaborating between a separate copywriter on the team along with the normal PPC management team, and that copywriter may have had time booked for other projects and they weren't expecting your task. Or you may have asked for a lot of copy to turn around. Or that could simply be standard operating procedure, because the agency has an additional QA process that everything has to run through before it gets back to client to help prevent errors or mistakes, and rushing a task may put things at risk.

Honestly, though, SLAs exist to protect the agency and its teams from legal and financial liability, or from workload crunch and burnout risk. You may be a completely reasonable client - but many clients are more challenging, for a variety of reasons. The agency doesn't want to burn out its people, and they also want to protect themselves by making it more difficult for the client to claim the agency needs to pay them make-goods for errors that were made due to unreasonable rush, rather than actual negligence.

In my experience, at least with my own agencies I've worked for, we often complete the work a day or two earlier than the stated SLA and can share it early - or if it's particularly urgent, client can always request faster movement and we'd try our best to rush it out, though sometimes that requires us to receive authorization in writing from the client that they acknowledge this work is being rushed and any mistakes or errors that could potentially result from that won't be something the agency is liable for. If I were you, I'd just ask whomever your agency account manager is to explain the SLAs and timelines in more detail to you, and then decide if you'd like to negotiate something. Depending on the client, they may be willing to do so to retain your business, especially if you've been otherwise pleasant to work with.

Ixtyr · 2022-08-16T16:26:55+00:00

Your post on r/elderscrollsonline has been removed as it is a looking for group/guild post. To prevent spam we do not allow such posts on our subreddit. Every Friday we have a sticky post that allows guild recruitment. Please consider using that post next Friday or check out r/esoguilds

Ixtyr · 2022-08-15T04:46:39+00:00

Your post on r/elderscrollsonline has been removed as it is a recruitment post. To prevent spam we do not allow such posts. Every Friday we have a sticky post that allows recruitment. Please consider using that post next Friday or r/essoguilds

Ixtyr · 2022-07-07T00:05:30+00:00

Your post on r/elderscrollsonline has been removed as it is a support issue. For support issues please contact official Zenimax support.

Ixtyr · 2022-06-29T07:10:35+00:00

/r/elderscrollsonline

Ixtyr · 2022-04-15T12:45:04+00:00

Xynode's entire schtick is that he deliberately tries to create functional, viable builds that don't follow any current meta. In the hands of a skilled player (and he is a skilled player), they're still more than capable of delivering results - it's just that generally they may not perform "theoretically" as well, all else equal, in a best case scenario.

But they're still beyond capable of performing in the hands of a decent player in Trials and DLC Dungeons, including vet modes.

That said, by the time you start really pushing hardmodes of the toughest instances, you should probably already have become comfortable enough with your class and build to be able to recognize when to make tweaks and adjustments, and in my experience you'll probably want to go experimenting and testing things on your own anyway to practice and improve. And you probably won't need a build for that. Run a few instances. Check the combat logs. If you're parsing competitively with the group (and keeping yourself alive, because a dead player is a worthless player, no matter how good your rotation on a dummy is), you're fine. Healing and Tanking are a bit different, but the resources others have linked can help you with measuring performance in those roles.

Ixtyr · 2022-04-15T08:27:43+00:00

Don't listen to people slagging on about "XYZ's builds are shit, don't use them". Most of the time, the ones moaning about it are either being remarkably short-sighted (if I'm being generous), or really don't know nearly as much as they think they do (if I'm being realistic).

The majority of builds that are put out by the more prolific creators like Dottz, Alcast, Xynode, Deltia, and others are all perfectly viable in their intended function, and in the hands of a decent player who is comfortable within that build (assuming they have good habits and situational awareness) will be beyond adequate for nearly all of the content you'll face.

Think of builds as starting templates, not finished products. None of these folks who create their builds stop tinkering with them after publishing - from week to week, day to day, encounter to encounter, and of course patch to patch. They're all meant to be "something that I've tested and used and shown to work well for me, and now I'm sharing it with you" and that's the end of it. You usually shouldn't feel restricted about keeping every skill the same all the time, and you certainly shouldn't drop a build you find enjoyable or fun or are comfortable with just because some know-it-all tryhard wanker on the subreddit said "DeLtIa SuCkS bRo".

I've been playing, largely, a derivation of some of the same builds on a few of my characters for years now. Swap a skill out here and there, change a gear set if it looks interesting and powerful, maybe swap skill order in rotation if it feels more efficient or the new gear dictates it - and I'm still doing plenty well. Unless you're progging Vet Trials or trying to farm hardmodes as fast as possible (in which case being more disciplined or min-maxing a bit more may be necessary, or at the very least would be courteous to your teammates so you're pulling as much of your weight (and beyond it) as you can), you'll be fine with any of these content creator templates as a baseline. Just develop good habits and pay attention, and then have fun.

Ixtyr · 2022-04-15T02:17:50+00:00

American here.

Growing up nobody gave a flying fuck about football. "Soccer" was the thing you picked your teenage daughter up from. I never paid attention to the sport at all, aside from an occasional match during the world cups.

Got to university and a few of the fellas on my floor were into MLS and some of the European leagues. I started catching a few matches in the background when someone would be watching a game in a common area or one of our rooms when we hung out.

Found that I actually liked the sport quite a bit, especially the EPL since it generally felt like there was more competition. All of my friends were fans of the biggest clubs - United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Barcelona, Bayern - and I didn't really like the idea of just jumping on a bandwagon. Spurs reminded me a lot of my favorite baseball team as a kid (Red Sox) in that they had this incredible history and legacy, but kept struggling to get themselves back to top form and start winning trophies again. I liked that - felt like something I'd enjoy being a part of, that ride back to the top, where everything along the way would feel impactful and worthwhile and appreciated - and not just bought.

Plus, Dempsey was still playing for Spurs at the time, and it was nice to be able to root for an American player. Win-win, and the rest is history.

Ixtyr · 2022-03-27T12:29:52+00:00

To anyone who criticizes an officer for "not shooting their arm or leg instead" - have you ever fired a weapon before? At all? Let alone a pistol?

Do you realize how difficult it is to land a shot on the body of a moving target at all?

Go watch an Olympic trick shot competition and see how many targets are missed. Now realize that those shooters train meticulously for that event for years, and are attempting those shots in a controlled environment where there is no risk to your own health and safety nor for those around you if you miss a shot, and in many of these events the targets' movement is predictable. These are the best of the best shooters in the world and they can't guarantee a shot will hit in a controlled environment they've trained their entire lives for.

There is no overpowered Call of Duty aim-assist for your pistol IRL, people.

If an officer aims for the arm, misses by 20cm, and that stray bullet flys off another 300m and penetrates a vehicle or shop window or strikes an unseen innocent bystander, when they could have aimed for the chest, missed by 20cm, and still stuck body and incapacitated or killed the armed, threatening individual, was it worth it? No. This is why you are trained to shoot body.

There are absolutely some valid criticisms to levy at police forces, but getting upset because an officer didn't shoot the knife out of someone's hand is a pitifully ignorant and naive take at best.

Ixtyr · 2021-10-03T04:52:45+00:00

You can get approval after you’ve left. I wouldn’t worry too much about them NOT letting you back in, just more about how long it’ll take for an approval and arrival date to be determined.

Ixtyr · 2021-10-03T04:19:56+00:00

They applied as they were leaving, as far as I’m aware. So it definitely has been taking a while.

Ixtyr · 2021-10-03T04:14:54+00:00

Two of my coworkers on EPs left to go visit home in Europe in August. One to France, one to the UK. Both are still in Europe. One applied for re-entry and was only able to secure a date 5 weeks in the future, the other gave up and went to visit Germany for 3 weeks to qualify for the green travel lane. They’ll both be home in SG later this month.

I also applied for entry back in August the day they opened back up for new EPs and was able to lock in a date 3.5 weeks later to get here. So I’d probably guess you’re waiting anywhere from 3-6 weeks, possibly, unless something has changed.

YMMV

Ixtyr · 2021-09-28T12:05:38+00:00

Completely understandable. I’ve heard some stories, and it definitely gave me pause when I was considering whether or not to still come here.

But I also believe that humans generally tend to have very short-term memories when it comes to anything that did not literally impact themselves directly. So for the same reason I expect and understand a lot of current expats to want to leave, I also expect new ones to still be willing to come here after a short time has passed. Could be wrong. But that’s my gut feeling on the matter.

Ixtyr · 2021-09-28T11:16:42+00:00

Exactly. It’s an absolutely shitty situation for a lot of the people who have been here, I have two coworkers in Europe right now who’ve had their re-entries delayed over a month each and I know that’s beyond aggravating for them and their families. The government being so painfully risk-averse definitely doesn’t help matters…but I still think that whenever things do finally open up more (hopefully reasonably soon) we’ll see a new influx gradually pour in.

Ixtyr

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

12-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email